That's why the national anthem became a troubled moment for many back then. Did we want to stand for a flag that symbolized policies we rejected — and a country where our voice was ignored?

Decades later, I forgot about all that when Colin Kaepernick first took a knee.

To be honest, I thought it was the wrong way to protest. I respected that he was making a statement that could cost him, but I didn't like it.

Because I'd changed since my protest days.

Something opened my eyes.

Often, you come to understand America best when you leave it, especially for places that lack rights.

In the mid-1980s, I went to Ethiopia to cover a famine there — it was communist, and I was stunned at what life is like in a country without freedom.

I was assigned a government "minder" to monitor me as a journalist, and on my way out, had to get my film stamped at the Ministry of Censorship.

Then there was the deprivation, and I don't mean the famine alone — incompetent governments in many places failed to provide the people's basic needs.

There was so much want.

I had also taken religious tolerance for granted in America, and then went to Northern Ireland at the peak of The Troubles. The hate there was so bad, they had to build high "sectarian walls" between Catholic and Protestants neighborhoods.

Later, I went to Beirut when Americans were being kidnapped by Islamic extremists and was warned that if I got in trouble, there would be no help. The government was too weak to control many areas. Which, of course, was a far bigger nightmare for the people there caught in war.

So much fear.

I came home from those trips forgetting my 1960s mindset.

And with no qualms about standing for the flag and anthem. Because it now represented things I'd taken for granted but no longer did.

In essence, it symbolized the Four Freedoms that Franklin Roosevelt spoke eloquently about:

Freedom of speech, of religion, from want, and from fear.

So many countries don't have those.

It's an exceptional gift — and achievement — that we do.

That's what the flag came to represent to me.

And why I was at first troubled when Colin Kaepernick took a knee.

Didn't he see that, though flawed, it's an extraordinary country?

Then came the president's volatile remarks, and the unlikely sight of so many linking arms in solidarity, including team owners.

Which made many of us try to see it through their eyes.

And then I remembered.

I remembered how I'd once felt.

And realized those kneeling today feel as I once did — that their voices are ignored by their country.

Having learned what I did overseas, I'll always stand for the flag.

Maybe in time, today's on-field protesters will too.

But I understand those who feel the flag doesn't yet fully fly for them — because long ago, I felt the same.